We’re waiting, anxiously, for Husband’s brother and sister-in-law and two-adorable-nieces to arrive from Vancouver Island, B.C. for an extended visit.

They are flying from Seattle to Denver, and then from Denver to Grand Rapids.

Of course, since we are planning on picking them up at the airport, we started tracking their flights mid-afternoon.

Here is a list of all of the Denver — Grand Rapids flights listed for today:

This is what the airline has shown since 2 p.m. today regarding the last leg of their flight:

Meanwhile, the airport shows:

We were debating whether we should call the airline, or the airport, to try to resolve the discrepancy, when we noticed an email message from Husband’s Brother, saying that their flight had been delayed, and that he trusted we knew this, as we had probably been tracking his flight, FLIGHT # 2353.

This was a little odd, as when the Frontier airlines website was searched for flights from Denver to Grand Rapids, there was a flight, #256, listed, as you can see above, departing and arriving at exactly the same scheduled times, and declared to be cancelled, and no flight given the number 2353.

And yet here it is:

And I’m just curious. Is it possible that this type of flight tracking and/or communication with their customers might have something to do with why Frontier Airline has recently been rescued from bankruptcy after a long and difficult financial position, basically since they opened in 1994? I picture some genius, who managed to finish his first semester of sophomore year in airline management, deciding that, rather than noting that flight numbers had been changed, it would make more sense to list the previously-numbered flight as cancelled.